ASL File Requester enhancements

@Rigo

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Talking of consistency, can the multi-select be made more consistent?

In WB:
SHIFT adds to the selection only
CTRL adds and removes from a selection

In ASL/listbrowser and other places:
SHIFT adds and removes from a selection
CTRL does nothing

Perhaps it is WB which should be changed, as that is where this decision was made originally, and nothing else has followed in the ten years since. A simple case of swapping the actions for CTRL and SHIFT within WB would resolve this slight consistency oversight.

@trixie
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I haven't ready this entire thread yet, but I just wanted to mention this:

After starting to use AmigaOS again after 12 years away, during which I've used mostly Linux, some OS X and a tiny bit of Windows, the ASL requester is one of the things I've enjoyed the most...

Compared to the other file requesters I've had to endure, it's by far the most comfortable to use. The main thing I miss is a preview option for images.

It may be ill-designed, but most file requests in general are horrendous.

Requester should respond -immediately- to the bottom gadgets. The user shouldn't be forcefed the contents of the directory IMO.

A little known fact in a Windows requester a user can paste a url into the filename and when selecting Ok the OS will connect to a server and download the file and action the file accordingly. On a Mac this is not available as an option, I guess this also isn't possible AmigaOS (?).

I used this feature again in Microshite today it would be a great feature to have in AmigaOS.

@djrikki

Already possible: try http-handler

Whether it works or not depends on the application which subsequently opens the file. Some things like to use Lock() which won't work. Try UnArc, which happily extracts stuff from archives situated on web servers

Or if you are talking about FTP: addresses, FTPMount is your friend.

Chris

@Chris

Hi Chris,

Well for starters I don't have an Amiga to try it on. :D

This isn't the point of this thread, a non-Amigan intending to use the next AmigaOS when the X1000 is released shouldn't have to download third-party software for X, Y, Z - which I must say seems to be everyone's answer to everything on 3 the Amiga forums for basic operability. Why do developers not give source code freely to Hyperion?

If A-Eon are releasing new hardware to the public by the end of the year; its fair to assume Hyperion will be working flat to introduce new features on its release. An overhaul of ASL and other GUI functionality is well overdue and I would expect the GUI to be near the top of their priority list.

@djrikki

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Really????? I can't believe it. I never tried to do such strange thing.
This is a bit too much for a simple requester.

Yeah helped the boss at work today; bit of a novice.

Instead of hunting for a file named eg. 6076286D-9F72-44B7-B421-1907CB762E6D.pdf locally on HD I pointed him to the same file on our website which is meaningful indexed, copypasta the URL, open M$ Outlook, create new email, add file attachment, paste clipboard and click ok to confirm.

Don't use it very often, but its a great shortcut in some circumstances.

You can do the same thing if you wanted to Insert a picture into a word document from a website.

@djrikki

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Well, OK, it's a fair point, but how many people actually need this functionality? I didn't know it was even possible on Windows (never had cause to try it anyway), and judging by Elwood's reply, he didn't know either.

It's not really something which should be hacked into the file requester, but added system-wide, which is what the two handlers I linked to achieve.

Quote:

Any number of reasons.

In the case of http-handler I did offer to upload the project (the beta one, with WebDAV support, not the version I linked to) to OpenAmiga, if somebody was willing to take it on and fix it (the XML parsing and WebDAV code is very buggy - I did have some specific test cases but the bug database they were in was KIA). Trying to fathom out parsing of XML - especially when the use of XML is mostly entirely unnecessary - tipped me over the edge and made me give up with it.

I got precisely 0 offers so the source code remains sitting here gathering virtual dust. I will throw open the offer again - PM me if you want to fix the WebDAV support in http-handler and I will upload the source to OpenAmiga.org.

That's enough on this subject, let's get back to ASL.